I'll second this. Laravel + Laravel Homestead (Pre-configured Vagrant VM) + Laravel Forge [2] (Server config + deployment processes) makes my life too easy. I

I'll second this. Laravel + Laravel Homestead (Pre-configured Vagrant VM) + Laravel Forge [2] (Server config + deployment processes) makes my life too easy. It doesn't even have to be a PHP/Laravel project for this process to really make your life easy. The Homestead VM has the same services installed and configured the same was as the forge server. Nginx (or Apache), mysql/mariadb, postgres, sqlite, node/bower/grunt/gulp, redis, memcached, beanstalkd, elasticsearch, go, etc Homestead has pre-built commands to make it very easy to add new sites/projects, does the port forwarding for you, handles the shared folders easily. Forge's UI allows you to not have to ssh into the server for things like restarting nginx/mysql/postgres, 2 click let's encrypt SSL certs, configure/restart queue workers (via supervisord), configure cron scripts and schedules, deploy via git with custom deploy scripts. You can create databases, create database users and manager their permissions. Create firewall rules and manage daemons. I spend all day in the PHP/Laravel ecosystem so it works for me - but I find myself pushing non-PHP products through the same pipeline most of the time because it's so easy and just works. 1. https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/homestead https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/homestead 2. https://forge.laravel.com/features https://forge.laravel.com/features